 HCC 788 supports Girls of the Finest, a G.I. Joe costume club. Be sure to order their 2017 calendar. Proceeds to benefit the charity K9s for Warriors. Find them on Indiegogo.com. Hello everybody, Hoodicover Commander 788 here, and this week I am not in front of my green screen because we have something a little special. This week we are introducing a new segment to this channel called Literal Codenames. That's literal codenames. And this week we are looking at G.I. Joe's second Navy SEAL wetsuit. Wait for it. As I say, we are looking at wetsuits from 1986 and we are beginning the new segment literal codenames. So HCC 788 presents wetsuits. They have to be cold. This is wetsuit, the SEAL introduced in 1986. He was also available in 1987 and was discontinued for 1988, though he did not have a direct replacement in 1988. There was a second version of wetsuit introduced in 1986, the same year that the first version was available. And version two of wetsuit was part of the Special Mission Brazil box set. That was a five figure box set that came with a cassette tape. Wetsuit is of course the successor to Torpedo, the Navy SEAL introduced in 1983. Torpedo was the first naval personnel introduced in 1980s G.I. Joe and both wetsuit and torpedo as you can see are equipped for really just one job and that is as a frogman or a navy diver. There were two other versions of wetsuit in the vintage line in 1992 and 1993. Those later versions fixed some of the problems that the first version had, but those versions had their own problems and we'll get to that later. Seals as a reference to Navy SEALs and SEAL is an acronym for Sea, Air, and Land. Navy SEALs are trained to operate in all environments, they are the US Navy's Special Operations Force. They conduct missions that originate from water or a coastline. Unfortunately wetsuit is equipped for only one environment and that is sea diving. SEALs would of course be trained to do this, but as a SEAL, wetsuit should be able to go anywhere. Let's look at wetsuits accessories and as you can clearly see they are yellow. They have a very slight orange tint to them, but they are definitely on the yellow end of the spectrum. You can't miss them. He has what the contents of the card call an underwater sea sled, fits in his hand pretty well by this handle. This is a very unusual little accessory. This would be used to propel him through the water. It has some nice detail on the bottom. It has what looks like a headlight here to me. It has what, well I thought these were instrument gauges right here, but I think these actually are the propellers that get this thing going through the water. It doesn't have anything that looks like a weapon, at least nothing that looks like a weapon to me. There were underwater sleds similar to this in the 007 movie Thunderball. Wetsuit's next accessory is also not a weapon, it is a big flashlight. The card contents call this an underwater searchlight. This big flashlight really has very minimal detail. There's not really much going on here. It is made out of a softer plastic, so it is pliable. It has this loop on the handle, so you can loop that around Wetsuit's wrist if you want to. It can be sometimes difficult to get in and out of his hand, which accounts for the scuff marks on the handle. But what else is there to say about it? It's a big flashlight. Then he has the hose that goes to his scuba tanks, and we can pop these out and take a look at them. There's not a lot of detail on here, but it has some a little bit. There is a little bit of texture pattern on the hose itself. It has a couple knobs here to plug into the backpack, and we'll look at that in a minute. Then on the mouthpiece, it's designed to connect to the face mask on the action figure. It has these two holes, and those connect to two small nubs on the sculpted on face mask. The holes in the mouthpiece and the nubs on the face mask are quite small, so it can sometimes be difficult to get it plugged in here. But you just work with it until you get it plugged into the face mask. Once it is plugged in, it does stay in fairly well. Then we have Wetsuit's backpack, which contains his scuba tanks. But the scuba tanks must be inside the housing of the backpack, because there are no obvious scuba tanks sculpted on here. You can connect the hose to the backpack at these holes here near the top, and you just plug the ends of the hose into those holes. Then the hose would go over Wetsuit's shoulders, and the mouthpiece would plug into his face mask, as we've seen. This is pretty sophisticated for an 80s GI Joe toy. Wetsuit's backpack does have some detail, and if I were to have a criticism of it, it wouldn't be for lack of detail, is that it really doesn't look anything like scuba tanks. If you compare that to the 1983 Torpedo's backpack, Torpedo's backpack was a set of rebreather tanks, and although it's smaller, it looks more like underwater gear than Wetsuit's backpack does. Plus, Torpedo's backpack had that cool paint application, and that was pretty rare on GI Joe action figure accessories. Next we get to two accessories that are not listed on the contents of the card, his flippers. He has two black flippers. They are both the same. There's not a left and a right one. They connect to his feet by the foot pegs, just the way a figure stand would. They just connect right to his feet like that. They stay on pretty well, and you know they actually work kind of in lieu of a figure stand. Wetsuit stands pretty well with his flippers on. These flippers are not new. They are reissued from the 1985 Cobra Eels, and they are the same. Right down to that black plastic, they didn't even change the color. Normally, I'm not a big fan of reissuing accessories like this, but if you're going to have a standard accessory that gets reissued with other action figures, diving flippers would probably be a good candidate for that. I really don't see the need to sculpt new flippers for every diver you have in the toy line, so these are fine. They're just generic flippers. Compare Wetsuit's accessories with Torpedo from 1983. Both were Navy SEALs. Both were only equipped as divers. But at least Torpedo had a weapon. He came with this harpoon gun. Wetsuit had no weapon accessories. He looks more like a sport diver or an undersea explorer than a GI Joe ready to fight Cobra. Let's take a look at Wetsuit's articulation. He had the articulation that was standard by 1986, meaning he could turn his head from left to right and look up and down. He could swing his arm up at the shoulder, and he could swivel at the shoulder all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow, and he had a swivel at the bicep. The figure was held together with a rubber O-ring that looped around the inside. That allowed him to move at the torso a bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could move his leg at the hip about 90 degrees, and he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt design and color of Wetsuit, starting with his head. And that head is really something. It has that big, bright, orangey yellow helmet. It has some very interesting details sculpted on the helmet. Up here at the top, it has what looks like sculpted on lights for illumination underwater. It has goggles. It has that infamous face mask. You can connect the hose to that. Of course, this helmet is non-removable. The face mask and goggles are non-removable. He's essentially stuck in his diving gear. The US Navy does use helmets similar to this, even in a similar color. Those helmets are tethered to the surface by hoses. But I'd say this helmet is not really unrealistic. You could imagine a helmet like this existing in the real world. Whether or not it's a good action figure design is another question entirely. Since the helmet has protrusions, that face mask and the knobs on the face mask, paint wear is frequently going to be a problem. So if you care about that kind of thing, take a look at the face mask. That black paint will often be worn away. On his chest, he has a diving wetsuit that is primarily in, I would call this an aquamarine color. It's a light bluish green. He has a white patch on the chest. And on that patch, he has a red detail here. It looks like a flying fish. This flying fish tampo is fine. It's a nice little splash of color on the action figure. But I think this was a missed opportunity. Instead of using the flying fish, they could have used the emblem of the Navy Seals. And that would have been a nice tie in to his real world origins, similar to the way Gung Ho has his Marine Corps tattoo. There are some other remarkable details on this chest. He has some gray straps and some black pouches. And I do think those are very well done. He has some white stripes on his shoulders that continue down the arms. And his arms have short sleeves, gray straps and black pouches. On his right wrist, he has what I think looks like a sculpted on depth gauge and then on his left wrist, he has a black watch. His aqua colored wetsuit continues to his waist piece where he has a gray belt, black pouches. Those go all the way around and those look really nice. He has white stripes that continue down his legs. His legs are interesting in that they include the only weapons that wetsuit has. They are sculpted on and non-removable. On his right leg, he has a black pistol and a gray holster. And I don't know what he's gonna do with that pistol underwater, but I guess he's taking it with him. On his left leg, he has a gray knife. Those white stripes continue down his thighs. He has some tall black boots, not a lot of detail on these, but of course the flippers will connect to his feet to complete the look. Let's take a look at wetsuits file card. It has his faction here as GI Joe and it has a portrait of wetsuit here. It has his code name as wetsuit with a hyphen. It has his specialty as seals and I don't think wetsuit is a plural seals. I just think this indicates that he came from the Navy seals. His final name is Brian M. Forrest. His primary military specialty is seal. His secondary military specialty is UDT or underwater demolitions. His birthplace is Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and his grade is E5. This paragraph says seals are the guys who were too nasty to be airborne rangers or marines. The Navy keeps their seals locked up below decks until something bad becomes worse. That's when they all get dumped into the soup on a rubber raft with a knife, a gun and all the ammo and explosives they can carry. Wetsuit may just as well be the roughest one of the bunch. He's wild and unruly, but he's simply the best at what he does. This quote down at the bottom says, wetsuit may be mean to the bone, but he's also quite bright, being well read in both the classics and the standard texts of military tactics. Pretty amazing considering that the level to which he's developed his toughness would seem to indicate full-time occupation. I think there's a text variant of this file card. Some wetsuit file cards I've found online I have in place of toughness, they say orneriness and cussedness. Changing that to the word toughness does not quite convey the same sense of wetsuit being someone who's very difficult to get along with, but orneriness and cussedness are kind of hokey colloquialisms, so it's probably better that they changed it. Wetsuit's entry in G.I. Joe Order of Battle issue number two uses the toughness line, not the orneriness and cussedness line. You know what this file card doesn't do? It doesn't tell you what SEAL means. And Torpedo's file card, right up in his specialty, it says in parentheses SEAL is sea air and land. There's nothing about that on wetsuit's file card, and I guess it's just assumed by 1986 you know what a Navy SEAL is, but all the same I think the SEALs were a little bit short changed and deserved a better write-up in wetsuit's file card. Wetsuit made some appearances in the G.I. Joe animated series and the creative people on that series knew that of course they couldn't just leave wetsuit in his diving helmet all the time. So they took some artistic license in creating a face for wetsuit. Wetsuit had short brown curly hair in the G.I. Joe cartoon series. In that animated series he was often paired with Leatherneck the Marine with whom he had a contentious friendship. You could say they were frenemies. They were buddies but they traded insults. I think that's a good way to develop characters by kind of having them bounce off each other like that. In reality both these guys would be type A's so it probably would be difficult for them to get along together even if they did like each other on some level. In the G.I. Joe comic book published by Marvel Comics wetsuit first appears in issue number 47 and he's right on the cover. And it's a great cover, a great action scene featuring Hawk, Beachhead and the Devilfish. Wetsuit's yellow helmet is recolored red which is still a bright color but it looks maybe a little better than the yellow. Wetsuit appears in G.I. Joe's special missions in the very first issue and he's on the cover and again he looks great alongside torpedo. They changed his wetsuit color to green and they gave him dark green accessories and I have to say this looks good. I could imagine wetsuit in this color scheme. Looking at this figure overall wetsuit is not equipped as a combat troop or even a combat diver. He comes with no weapons other than what is sculpted on the figure and non-removable. And I just don't think wetsuit is a very creative codename. You were supposed to do it once, once. It was a dry spot. Was there ice? I felt ice. His non-removable helmet is a problem for me. He looks wrong in any other environment. He's a seal. He should be able to fight on land. But if you take away his flippers and his scuba tank he still looks awkward in any other environment. This is a well sculpted figure and the bright colors work fine as long as you don't use him in combat. He looks like a sport diver or maybe a rescue diver. Unfortunately this doesn't work well for a Navy SEAL and they did this to torpedo too. I think the Navy SEALs deserved better representation in G.I. Joe. Later versions of wetsuit fixed some of these problems. Version two from Special Missions Brazil looks nice in silver. Versions of wetsuit that were released in the 1990s had a removable helmet, nice, and they had a base black colored wetsuit. That's an improvement, but unfortunately the highlights were still in very bright colors. I call this a middle tier figure. It misses the bottom tier because of that nice sculpting and detail but I've never been a fan of that color scheme. Although later versions improved on this none of them really did justice to wetsuit. He never became the Navy SEAL we deserved. That was my review of the 1986 wetsuit. I hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you check back next week for another Vintage G.I. Joe Twitter review. Make sure you like me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, support me on Patreon, and share this video to help this channel grow. Okay, I know you've been wanting to do it again. Dunk me. Thank you. This is our last segment of literal codenames. We're not doing this again. There will not be a literal codenames for Skidmark. I guarantee that. And remember, only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe.